Church of Backup, Revisited

I've written before about the importance of backing up your stuff. It's boring, but vital. (Anyone who has lost their stuff can wave their hands and give me an Amen.)

And if you're still not a member in good standing of the Church of Backup, you might consider that old grade-school standby, the buddy system. It's been working pretty well for my dad and me. (Hi Dad!)

Meanwhile, more and more of my life is lived / played out online, the questions about backup become more urgent.

At about my 2,000th tweet I realized that I was starting to lose track of things that I'd tweeted. I could remember that I'd tweeted out a link, but not who it had come from, or whether I'd also bookmarked it. Which is why I was so happy when Storytlr came along. Dead simple and super helpful; I instantly gained the ability to search through all my tweets with ease. Today a new online friend told me the sad news that Storytlr will be going offline at the end of the year. Phooey!

All of which raises the point... when you entrust your data to someone else, you're at risk. Other people can lose or inadvertently mangle your data, or they can simply go out of business. Services like Twitter that quickly become a staple of our online lives give us the opportunity to develop a whole new set of contacts... but do we have them? Or does Twitter?

One day this summer I was working on a presentation on my Google Docs account, when suddenly I was blacklisted. Two days before I was to present. I couldn't get into Google Docs at all, and had no idea why. My only recourse was to fill out the relevant form and wait while frantically querying my network and discovering a surprising number of folks who said, "Yeah, that happened to me once." A day or so later, just as mysteriously as it had gone black, my account was whitelisted again and I was ready to go. But it was a terrible day.

Is this where Backupify might come in? Backupify is a service that is expressly designed to help us backup our online accounts. Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, GMail, Google Docs, and a bunch more services are covered... the basic plan includes Twitter backup at no cost. More services and more space will result in a fee that is likely to seem like the best investment you've ever made the first time some of your stuff drops into a black hole.

I've signed up, but I don't think a backup has occurred yet; I am eager to see the service in action! (And by posting about it, I hope that I've just qualified for a premium account.) I never expected to be following hundreds of folks on Twitter (or to have hundreds of them following me), or to Tweet out hundreds of links, but I would be crushed to lose all that information, because so much of it was about serendipity... how would I ever re-create it?

How about you? What could YOU not afford to lose? And what are you doing about it?

Happy Square Root Day!

Wow, how cool is this? It's Mr. D's half birthday AND Square Root Day!

March 3rd, 2009 = 3.3.9 ... get it?

I'm just sorry I didn't know about it in time to create square cupcakes!

Although we were quite pleased with our symbolic "half birthday" half and half icing.

(A big tip o' the hat to Aunt Chelle,
who clued us into Square Root Day just in time.
And I have to say I'm enjoying online photo editor Phixr.)

Square+Root+Day

Someone is Five Years Old!

Mr. D and I had SO much fun making this today...
please click on over to our Scratch page for the live-action demo.
Two minutes, tops.

Happy Birthday, NBR!

Life Is A Verb Blog Tour support

(This edition of But Wait, There's More! is especially geared towards fellow fans of Patti Digh's work who are planning to serve as hosts for the Life Is A Verb Blog Tour. If all of that means nothing to you, you might want to just scroll on down or stop back tomorrow. Unless you're counting down to something exciting in your life, in which case you might be able to make use of this information after all.)

Hey there, fellow LIAV Blog Tour participants! I have recently created a LIAV blog tour countdown widget for my blog (scroll down to the bottom of this entry if you want to see how it came out), and if you'd like to add one to your blog, the instructions follow below.

Image: 'Frames' on Flickr by João Moura

1) Scout your location. (Figure out where on your blog you're going to place your widget. It'll be helpful to have a sense of the dimensions of the available space.) And save a back-up version of your template BEFORE making any changes, just in case you have to revert back to it. (Which you may want to do once the Blog Tour has passed you by and your countdown counter is at zero, for example.)

2) Commit to a time and date for your stop on Patti's blog tour. (Countdowns require a specific end point.) (You and Patti are in agreement about your date, right?)

3) Leave a browser window or tab open somewhere with this post while you work, so you'll be able to copy and paste the urls from step six.

4) In a new browser window or tab, head on over to http://www.yourminis.com/minis/yourminis/yourminis/mini:countdown

5) Click on the button that says, "Edit Event."

6) In the first two fields (Date & Time), enter the data relevant to your day on the LIAV blog tour.

In the field labeled, "Event Name or Image URL" copy and paste this url: http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i174/butwait/lifeisaverb.jpg

In the field labeled, "Link url," copy and paste this url: http://pattidigh.com

Then hit "Save" and you'll see the first draft of your widget.

7) Drag the bottom right-hand corner of your widget until you get the countdown clock to the dimensions you think will work on your blog.

8) There should be a small cluster of three editing buttons at the top right of your widget. Click on the left hand button to play around with the color scheme if you like. (I left mine basic black.) Then click the middle button, which looks like a downward arrow, to select "Copy Me."

9) Clicking on the first symbol in the resulting graphic (a circle with a plus sign in it) will generate the embed code you need for your countdown widget.

10) Copy that code. Open up your blog's template, and paste the code on in where you would ordinarily paste an html sidebar widget. Hit save, cross your fingers, re-open your blog, and let me know how it works!

Congratulations on being a part of this exciting work, and don't forget to include the following things in your actual September Blog Tour post:

1. Please include a link to 37days (www.37days.com)

2. Please include a link to Patti's online electronic press kit at www.pattidigh.com, where your readers can find a lot more info on the book.

3. Please mention any upcoming book signings, in case you have readers in those areas. You should be able to get up-to-date information at http://www.booktour.com/author/patti_digh.

4. For extra credit, write a review of the book and post it over at B&N online or Amazon.

(PS: How cool is that photo by João Moura?
Anyone know the name of the artist?
Those of us who are serving as way stations
on the Life Is A Verb Blog Tour
have some kinship with those frames,
it seems to me.
If you need tech support, let me know
in the comments, and I'll try to help.)

VoiceThread

I've signed up to lead a few online mini-courses over the summer, and in preparation for that have given myself permission to play around with some technologies that are new to me.





In this case, I combined my noodling with my "to do" list... I've been wanting to do some kind of image-oriented promotion for this amazing Quaker event for at least two years now. Hope folks enjoy it!

(I usually ask friends before I put images
out here on the intertubes,
but haven't gotten to everyone in this show yet...
if you see a picture of yourself and are aghast,
please email me and I'll take care of it.
Oh, and if you're intrigued by VoiceThread,
they're over at voicethread.com, natch.)

Tag Cloud 2.0

I have almost 4,000 sites bookmarked via del.icio.us (they're over here, in case you're curious).

Each site is labeled with at least one tag, and this is a visual representation of 80 or so of the most popular tags. Cool, huh?

(Click on image to embiggen.)

(Want one? Try heading on over to Wordle.
You don't have to be a del.icio.us user, either...
you can toss any text into the mixer
and then play with the output.
Bad for productivity:
my brownbag lunch today is going to be blah.)

Games

Here's Mr. D playing Othello vs. the famous Mr. G, one of his good friends and most frequent opponents in the after-school games. I try whenever possible not to rush D out, but to let him stay and finish his game if that's what he'd rather do. So I get to lurk and listen. Games often end with a handshake and the pronouncment, "Good game." I don't think I'll ever get tired of witnessing spontaneous good manners on our son's part.

In addition to wondering idly about the location of my colored ink pads (I had to make a birthday card today with homemade stencils, yikes!) I'm still watching yesterday's music video of our guy's evolution as a bike rider once every couple of hours. And just after I've been grooving on Larry Lessig's TED talk about the necessity of openness and creativity! Gotta love those geniuses at ANIMOTO.

And hey Wendy, I got myself a space in a little "how to" letterboxing session later this year, so yay, I might actually get that particular creative act in gear. And we completely love What Kind of Cat Are You? too!

We're contemplating taking in the Philly Holiday Pops around Christmas this year... anyone have any informal reviews to share? Time to fold the laundry...

(Day 19 of NaBloPoMo.)
(Also, many happy returns to my BFF Claire Dana.)

A Good Time to Be Alive

As wary as I am of Google's data-gobbling tendencies as they relate to my personal life (see this recent article in Wired for an overview; I've been using Scroogle for most of my searches for over a year now), I have to now sing the praises of its selective usefulness.

That book up there? Is somewhere. But I can't find it, and it's one of D's and my favorites. What's worse, until about 7 second ago, I couldn't remember the title. I knew it had the word "legends" in it, but that wouldn't have gotten me very far in the old days of searching... just try typing "legends" into the search engine over at Powells and see what you get!

But as it turns out, in the world we're living in, I do remember enough about that book to remember it with electronic assistance!

Google's Book Search (still in beta, but fully functional for my purposes) searches the CONTENTS of books. Having read it out loud many time, I remember multiple phrases from that book with crystalline clarity. So, I scooted on over to Google books (http://books.google.com) and typed in a phrase from the song that Mahuika sings while Maui is still up in the air: "Up you go to the first level!" And look at what comes up!

Reference librarians, book-sellers, and grandparents wanting to reintroduce the books of their youth to the next generation should all be doing little dances of glee. I know I am.

Coming Soon

Pictures from yet another fabulous trip to the East Coast Kinetic Sculpture Race should be up shortly.

Meanwhile, if you're so inclined, you can check out the he/she ratio of any website here. (Despite my frequent featuring of a certain young gentleman, But Wait, There's More currently clocks in at only 11% male. Oh well.)

In other news, I'm trying to figure out what I could possibly contribute to the Coudal Partners' Swap Meat... (if you're a creative type and enjoy getting cool mail, you should definitely check that action out; they just extended their submission deadline through the end of May).

Never a dull moment!

Nobody Tells Me Anything

Hey! When was somebody going to tell me that Google Earth is available for Macs?!

W00t!

Ahem. Carry on.

15,000 Days

According to some geeky-cool website that calculates such things, as of today I've been alive for 15,000 days.

I'm grateful for every one.

And for this fellow, who was out the door before 7am this morning, transported by the thought of the winter's first snow.

Check out the tiger paws.

Ze Frank on Thanksgiving

This is good stuff:

Geek Poet Seeks Collaborator

Apologies to those of you who stopped by to see today's haiku... we interrupt to bring you this partial screenshot of the fun free new toy available over at http://yourminis.com

An incredibly customizable webpage with drag-and-drop functionality, courtesy of the good people at goowy media.

End of geek outburst.

Meanwhile, back at One Deep Breath, the call this week is for a renga, which is a collaborative form of poetry. (See posting for details.)

I have a starting haiku. I have a call out to a friend. But if anyone else out there is feeling brave (Becky? Karen?) send me an email or drop a comment and maybe we can team up, too!

Music Lovers Ahoy

Anyone out there who loves music or is at least interested in musical instruments should check out David Ahmed's amazing freeware program here.

Great tip, Angela... I know a certain small someone who will soon be grooving on this.